1 Meredith Celene Schwartz Monday December 13, 2004 A Reply to the Dilemma of Epistemic Responsibility Section 1: Introduction I intend to defend epistemic responsibility against Stephen Hetherington’s charges presented in the article “Epistemic Responsibility: A Dilemma.” Hetherington’s article makes some assumptions that are common throughout traditional epistemologies. I chose to examine Hetherington’s dilemma because I take it to be representative of the epistemological ‘view from nowhere’ that has been the subject of feminist critique. Through critiquing the example provided by Hetherington, I will demonstrate some difficulties that are common to any epistemic approach that holds these assumptions. Thus although my criticisms will be focused on the view presented by Hetherington, these criticisms apply more broadly against many forms of traditional epistemology. In the second section of this paper I will outline what Hetherington takes to be the central problem for a responsiblitst epistemology. Hetherington argues that if epistemic responsibility is going to be strong enough to justify claims to knowledge then the epistemic agent must be acting freely such that he would be able not to have assented to the belief that is supported by his evidence (Hetherington 2002, 402). According to Hetherington, this would require that the possibility of misusing one’s evidence must be included in the very notion of being epistemically responsible (Hetherington 2002, 403). Misusing one’s evidence is, however, clearly not epistemically responsible. Thus Hetherington sees that epistemic responsibilists face a dilemma. Hetherington’s attack on epistemic responsibilism seems plausible at first glance. There seems to be no solution to the problem until one uncovers the assumptions hidden